American Eloquence, Volume I | Page 4

expectation among thinking men of any other result than that which followed. The national power which the confederation sought to create was an entire nonentity. There was no executive power, except committees of Congress, and these had no powers to execute. Congress had practically only the power to recommend to the States. It had no power to tax, to support armies or navies, to provide for the interest or payment of the public debt, to regulate commerce or internal affairs, or to perform any other function of an efficient national government. It was merely a convenient instrument of repudiation for the States; Congress was to borrow money and incur debts, which the States could refuse or neglect to provide for. Under this system affairs steadily drifted from bad to worse for some six years after the formal ratification of the articles. There seemed to be no remedy in the forms of law, for the articles expressly provided that no alteration was to be made except by the assent of every State. Congress proposed alterations, such as the temporary grant to Congress of power to levy duties on imports; but these proposals were always vetoed by one or more states.
In 1780, in a private letter, Hamilton had suggested a convention of the States to revise the articles, and as affairs grew worse the proposition was renewed by others. The first attempt to hold such a convention, on the call of Virginia, was a failure; but five States sent delegates to Annapolis, and these wisely contented themselves with recommending another convention in the following year. Congress was persuaded to endorse this summons; twelve of the States chose delegates, and the convention met at Philadelphia, May, 14, 1787. A quorum was obtained, May 25th, and the deliberations of the convention lasted until Sept. 28th, when the Constitution was reported to Congress.
The difficulties which met the convention were mainly the results of the division of the States into large and small States. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, the States which claimed to extend to the Mississippi on the west and cherished indefinite expectations of future growth, were the "large" States. They desired to give as much power as possible to the new national government, on condition that the government should be so framed that they should have control of it. The remaining States were properly "small" states, and desired to form a government which would leave as much power as possible to the States. Circumstances worked strongly in favor of a reasonable result. There never were more than eleven States in the convention. Rhode Island, a small State, sent no delegates. The New Hampshire delegates did not appear until the New York delegates (except Hamilton) had lost patience and retired from the convention. Pennsylvania was usually neutral. The convention was thus composed of five large, five small, and one neutral State; and almost all its decisions were the outcome of judicious compromise.
The large States at first proposed a Congress in both of whose Houses the State representation should be proportional. They would thus have had a clear majority in both Houses, and, as Congress was to elect the President, and other officers, the government would thus have been a large State government. When "the little States gained their point," by forcing through the equal representation of the States in the Senate, the unsubstantial nature of the "national" pretensions of the large States at once became apparent. The opposition to the whole scheme centred in the large States, with very considerable assistance from New York, which was not satisfied with the concessions which the small States had obtained in the convention. The difficulty of ratification may be estimated from the final votes in the following State conventions: Massachusetts, 187 to 163; New Hampshire, 57 to 46; Virginia, 89 to 79, and New York, 30 to 27. It should also be noted that the last two ratifications were only made after the ninth State (New Hampshire) had ratified, and when it was certain that the Constitution would go into effect with or with-out the ratification of Virginia or New York. North Carolina did not ratify until 1789, and Rhode Island not until 1790.
The division between North and South also appeared in the convention. In order to carry over the Southern States to the support of the final compromise, it was necessary to insert a guarantee of the slave trade for twenty years, and a provision that three fifths of the slaves should be counted in estimating the population for State representation in Congress. But these provisions, so far as we can judge from the debates of the time, had no influence against the ratification of the Constitution; the struggle turned on the differences between the national leaders, aided by the satisfied small States, on